


Ridden

by Guede



Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: BDSM, Dom/sub Undertones, Dubious Consent, Enemies to Lovers, Humiliation, Loss of Control, M/M, Psychological Drama, Retirement, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 09:10:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19720624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: The end’s coming for Paolo, and it doesn’t quite look like what he thought it would.





	Ridden

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted to LJ in 2007.

They seem less like dreams and more like glimpses of alternative lives, where maybe he wasn’t so careful, so proper, so aware even in his very young, very curious days of the consequences that would eventually circle down on him like so many vultures, though in the end he made sure not to be the one providing the bloated, dissipated feast. He was tempted, and he dipped his toes into the shallow end of a few dark oceans, but he never did take that first step. He’d decided not to even before Sacchi showed up and startled him into a firm declaration on the matter.

It wasn’t even a difficult choice. He loved football, he loved running out onto the green grass, and so he loved nothing that would shorten his time out there—and he already knew that that would be limited, but as in the way of young men everywhere, he dreamed of making it last as long as possible. And perhaps as in the way of older men, he knew taking that choice would steal the life from others, crush them away into the shadows, dry up those vast uncertain seas and leave him on his narrow, firm path. He took it anyway, without hesitation.

He’s Paolo Maldini now, Milan for twenty years and still counting for a little while longer. He has walked his one path with every step a sure one, and not turned once to look back at what was left behind. He’s God, people say, and he will shake his head at them and mean it, because he is a good Catholic but more because he is a good man, a great footballer and so he knows that no one is God. Not out there, with the brown mud slashing up beneath the grass with every tackle and the strain in the body every second threatening to give way to full collapse. Not with injury and failure and recrimination just around every counterattack, not with the way the stands can change their songs of praise to vicious howls on the skip of a heartbeat.

But, and he guessed this then but knows it now, he is something else. He is not God but he is higher than the sweat and caking earth and shaking muscles. Because he’s made himself so, through his unwavering steps no matter the distractions. Through the victories, where he’s remembered always that the glow would end soon, and the losses, where he’s always held his head up looking for the next chance. His choice then has paid him back now in a coin that will be good till the San Siro itself falls to pieces. And so he’s content.

Paolo Maldini, however, is still a man.

* * *

“It’s just a nothing, a little bet because I couldn’t stand his baiting anymore,” Sandro snorts. He stamps his feet on the floor, frowning as some irregularity in his shoes refuses to smooth out. The kit-man looks up, but Sandro swerves away before anyone can even offer, preferring to deal with the problem himself. “That shit and his smirk.”

It’s much quieter than it should be, no muffled shouts or rumbling vibrations seeping their way down from the stands this time. In past times they’ve cranked up the music nearly to the point of pain—not so much because that worked as because it at least made them feel like they weren’t paying attention—but today the stereo isn’t even on. There’s still the rustling of cloth, the muttered swears, but the sound of Paolo’s locker door as he shuts it seems to cut straight to the bone. “Still.”

“What?” Sandro lifts his head, then irritably pushes a few unruly strands behind his ear. His waves are already beginning to snag to each other, despite the care he’d taken with them just minutes before. “He’s lost already. Maybe it’s a good sign.”

Normally Sandro wouldn’t equivocate, or for that matter, even resort to superstitions. Being Roman already gives you so much of that that you don’t need to bother, he says. Being Roman or Milanese has nothing to do with it, Paolo thinks, but he’s kept his observations to himself from the first day he stepped into this room. Everyone finds their beliefs their own way, and as long as it doesn’t interfere with the belief of the team, it does no harm.

“What?” Rino doesn’t even wait for an answer, already bouncing on his toes, dressing at a near-run as he moves incessantly across the room. It’s drawn a few odd looks, but Paolo’s glad to see it, using it as he does to measure the mood of the rest.

He’s gone, but Sandro answers him anyway, or maybe to Paolo, whom he doesn’t have to see to know is still lingering, retucking socks over shin-guards. “It was one of those media stories about the ‘year of revenge.’ He emailed it with a snide comment and I just said, if you think Boca will do it, then—”

“Never mind,” Paolo mutters. He doesn’t care too much, really; he only worries because Sandro needs not to lose his head, to get stuck into one of those personal duels. They may be delightful for the commentators, but they’re not so good for the overall play, and especially since he’s been watching the videos and he knows Ibrahimović is hardly the only one at Inter who needs that close a watching this year.

“He’s going to look like the ass he is,” Sandro finishes. And likewise he gives his laces a last tug before he stands up, his eyes half-closed but burning from beneath their frail covers of flesh. He half-turns towards Paolo for that little upchuck of the chin, which is how he ends any dismissive conversation. “God. Let’s get this over with.”

He goes but Paolo stays, though he’s done as well. He knows Sandro already has noticed his tendency to do that this season, and if Sandro feels like he can drop a few half-hearted comments, then the others had to have also picked up on it. So Paolo tries to limit himself, but today, he thinks, it doesn’t matter if it tells the younger ones this match really matters, this one isn’t ‘just the next game.’ Anyway, it isn’t.

“Still not so fond of Ibracadabra, huh.” Ambro isn’t either, but his dislikes run more along the lines of Paolo’s. Coolly professional, the distance a useful examining tool for both the opponent and oneself.

He’ll make a decent—and Paolo’s thought stops in its tracks as he turns to raise an eyebrow at the other man.

Of course Ambro looks away, but he’s feeling his year coming, or believing he feels it, anyway. He stands his ground. “Eh, sorry, there’s still the second one, isn’t there?”

“Even if there wasn’t, I would miss playing against him,” Paolo says quietly. “He’s been a good opponent, and those make your career.”

He means it, as usual. He’s spent too long closely sifting his own thoughts to not to, and anyway, as of this moment he’s outlasted better. That Ibrahimović will outlast him, and therefore neither of them will ever know the real truth, is merely a fact of life. It doesn’t unduly disturb Paolo, who knows too well how much of his own reputation he deserves to worry about others’, and if he’s to be completely honest—he tries to be in his own head, at the minimum—knows too well what this game is going to do to his damned knees without adding the concern of what Ibrahimović’s hair will look like. So he pushes that from his mind, as he always does with the irrelevant, and trusts Sandro to handle the striker, and instead concentrates on regulating himself as he finally turns out of the room. Just like every other time, with no more meaning than the ones that came before. Paolo refuses, this once, to think about the future.

* * *

_Dear Paolo, you have a decision to make._

So maybe somewhere else, Paolo didn’t blink back the sting of the chlorine and feel that tightening of shock in his throat, the warm water and sun suddenly fading before the nervous chill. Maybe the little man with his odd clownish smile appearing at the edge of the pool didn’t seem like a visitation, a signal from somebody that the days of dreaming were over and the real work had begun. Maybe, in that place, he just seemed like another fool interrupting Paolo’s holiday, another unwanted opinion holding forth in the middle of a whole crowd who thought that they knew Paolo’s father and therefore they knew him, that they could already see his path before even he’d come to find it, that they, before he’d even properly begun, knew how he was to end.

Twice wrong, all wrong, always wrong. He stares up at the man, this stranger in the foolish leather shoes with the molten Sardinian sun surely broiling his wits in his skull.

_What do you mean?_

_You’re at a turning point. You have to decide whether you want to be a footballer or a playboy._

The water stirs besides Paolo’s shoulder, teasing his skin with a wet ruffle. Somebody laughs, low and gravelly, like a ragged shadow to the man’s high-pitched, high-minded voice. “I thought you’d already made up your mind.”

“I have,” Paolo says, frowning. He lazily treads the water, the sticky bright warmth making his thoughts slow, but not too slow for him to remember that these are in fact his decisions, his times. He can see them when they’re in front of him, and does not need someone else to point them out to him.

His friend laughs again, brushing across Paolo’s back as the water swirls them apart. Paolo glances that way, then back, and by then this man on the side of the pool, this intruder who thinks he knows Paolo’s life better than he does, he’s stepped back into the shade. Lost the brilliant halo of the sun, and become just another one of the judging crowd: little man, already old, his smile hiding his envy.

_Well, coach…I thought that it’d be obvious what I want to do._

Paolo had been thinking that, back then, but he’d kept himself civil because he knew he was young, he knew he’d have to wait and listen. Learn a little, if it was worth it, but he’d already had a sense then that a lot of it wouldn’t be worth it and he’d merely be seeing out somebody else’s days on the way to his own. He’d often felt his impatience gnawing at him, but he had let it bite him instead of others. Because he had sympathy and respect, and because he knew one day he’d be that old man on the side, still clinging to a love and asking the younger ones if they could ever, would ever love it as much as he had.

But maybe—somewhere else he didn’t think of his age, he didn’t think of being careful and planning for that time to come because the time already there was so good and easy. Maybe he thought he already deserved it, and so he’d told Sacchi what he thought instead of: “Well, coach, I want to be a footballer, but I don’t know what you’ve heard.”

Since who cares what the man had heard, or what anybody had heard about him, Paolo thinks as he turns after his friend. Almost all the time it was wrong, just his father’s shadow looming over him and already he resents that a little for its irrelevance to him. What matters is what he can do, out here in the bright daylight where everyone can see for themselves, and not rely on hearsay.

“Exactly,” says his friend. Teeth flashing in a third laugh, the sun and the shadows wildly exchanging places on the skin smoothly stretched over the broad shoulders, the wet curls plastered down the side of the neck to blend into the long sleek locks of the first girl to have caught up with them. “You’re in control.”

And then he pushes at Paolo’s shoulders, quick and hard so Paolo’s feet slip off the bottom of the pool and when Paolo pushes them down—he touches nothing. The water sucks down at him so he drops, the sky suddenly going bluer than blue as his mouth and nose fill, as his hands flail outwards to fall on absolutely nothing. He starts to shout before he realizes how foolish that is, and slams his lips together, but the water’s already taken advantage of his mistake and is now burning in his lungs. He stares wide-eyed up at the rippling, blurring sky as something dark eats it up.

Then his head has broken into the air, his arms are spasming about somebody’s body as his legs trail limply downwards, still paralyzed by the shock. He’s gasping, coughing—he feels like he’s just seen the edge of death, and he needs something, somebody. Warmth, support: he clings to the arms holding him up.

The girl’s gone, somehow. It’s just himself and this man, this…was he Paolo’s friend? He’s familiar, and yet Paolo can’t remember where they met, what they’ve said to each other. Can’t place the dark flashing eyes, the long bridge of the nose, but God, the breadth of his palms splayed against Paolo’s back, the flex of his thighs as their legs tangle together. He’d dropped Paolo, but he’s picked him back up even more easily, and Paolo’s already lost his breath to the water.

“You are?” He leans forward, smiles close and conspiratorial and cutting against Paolo’s cheek. “I wonder.”

* * *

“He did look like an idiot,” somebody says. When Sandro doesn’t respond, just keeps slapping the towel about his neck and shoulders, the same somebody clears their throat. “Ibra—”

Sandro snaps the towel into the used bin like he means to slash it open, spilling the soiled terrycloth guts of it onto the floor. He doesn’t have to say anything after that, not even to Emerson who hasn’t yet picked up all the nuances of the tense moments, but he shots Kakha a look anyway.

“Stop that,” Paolo says. He’s trying hard to keep his frustration out of his voice, to clear the first half from his head and work up the reserves he’ll need for the second half. He hadn’t wanted to be chasing the game, not with his knees—and he refuses to think about that as well. If he lets in one doubt about his body, a flood will come instead, and he can’t afford the distraction. “It’s over. Never mind it.”

So Sandro looks at him instead, half the man’s mouth twisted up in a sneer, wet rat-tails of hair hanging down over the other half. “Did you—”

“I saw that, and that was the first half. Forget it.” Sometimes, Paolo has to admit, he wonders if he’s done the other man a wrong. He remembers Sandro at Lazio, remembers all the reasons for which he thought Sandro was the match for him, for which he pushed the club to get this one man, this one partner to last him the rest of his career—as if they weren’t both going to suffer injuries, what have you, and need to adjust to others.

Sandro’s still the best, still the one Paolo would trust unthinkingly in the biggest of storms, and not just with himself but with everything he holds dear, but…he’s not that man anymore. Now he’s used to Paolo telling him what to do, correcting him, so he doesn’t have to worry so much about picking out his own mistakes. Of course Paolo doesn’t think the other man has even realized this, let alone thought about it…and he would never point it out either. He knows it was necessary; two captains aren’t possible. Two captains aren’t allowable, either by commonsense or by him.

He’s worked too hard, he thinks. And now, when he’s staring the end in the face and knowing there’s no way to make amends later, he admits also he gave up too much. If others have to give as well, then that’s a choice he will make them take. And Sandro’s a grown man, who can handle such things. If he wants. “You’re having a great game,” Paolo adds, lower. “You’re stifling him.”

“Huh.” Sandro flicks the hair from his eyes, then looks at Paolo. His mouth flattens, and then he ducks his head to rip away a nonexistent dangling thread from his socks. “Paolo. There was—I made a second bet. I wasn’t thinking—he’s just so damn irritating, even over _email_ \--”

Paolo is closing his eyes before he’s even completely understood what Sandro is saying. Not that many meetings, considering the full span of his career, but it already feels as if these two have been feuding for the whole time. “What?”

But Carlo’s come in, and so Sandro can’t tell him till they’re walking back down the tunnel. By then Paolo can’t even react; they’re so close he can smell the ripped-up turf, his muscles immediately tensing in preparation. His stomach clenches as well, and that’s not normal, that’s from what he can’t feel right now, and so he pretends it’s not. He tells Sandro to forget about it, because whatever happens, it won’t be a problem. He promises.

Sandro’s a grown man, but he still looks at Paolo like that, so Paolo can see the other man visibly lightening. There’s never been a promise to him that Paolo hasn’t kept, but then, up till now Paolo’s never made one he couldn’t. He’d wonder, if he could, whether Sandro has ever considered that—

\--but they’re walking onto the pitch now, and he can’t think about it.  
* * *

He would’ve done well no matter what, would’ve stayed at Milan and in Italy no matter what. Those were never decisions, but pillars of his life. They would’ve stayed firm and planted, and by themselves have constrained his actions. But maybe he would’ve gone out further, tested more depths than he did, seeing as he could from the shallows the suspicious wavering darknesses where maybe there was a sandbar and maybe there was nothing but an endless fall. He didn’t ever chance those, but maybe somewhere he might’ve.

Mad as hell after a bad loss, a match where he did everything including pouring his blood out onto the San Siro grounds and still it wasn’t enough. The coach—Paolo can’t even bring himself to say his name—didn’t know what to do with the squad, the squad didn’t know what to do with each other, and thank God the president hadn’t come down before Paolo could escape, because this was one night Paolo couldn’t take the man.

“Couldn’t take anybody, could you,” jeers the silhouette loping alongside Paolo’s shadow. It’s taller, much taller, even taking into account the way the streetlights stretch the black shapes beyond their true measure. “You let him get by how many times? And your tackling—I’ve seen better from a—”

“It wasn’t all me. It’s not all me. There’s ten others, _at least_.” Paolo slams around the corner. There are other people on the streets, some stopping to turn, so he knows he’s being watched and noted, but he just really doesn’t want to care. He’s got a sour taste in his mouth and a gnawing pit in his gut, and the bitter knowledge of failure in his head. He doesn’t want to give a damn.

His so-called friend follows him anyway, snickering all the way. “ _Capitano_ ,” he calls to Paolo. “Capitano.”

“Fuck off,” Paolo snarls.

He ducks into the first mass of people he sees. They close around him, suffocating and hot, but at first it does help, it does wipe away the different pressure of who he is—no, of who he has to be, always playing for somebody because God knows what’ll happen if he stops. Maybe some days he doesn’t want to play. He’s never considered it but maybe he is now, maybe now he wants that more than anything else, maybe more than anything else he wants to do something besides live and die on one rectangle of grass. Maybe he just wants to _breathe_.

“Can’t do that here,” his friend says. Up close and tight against Paolo all of a sudden, the mob pushing them together. The dimness of the club doesn’t let Paolo see more than the startling white of an eye, the sharp line of a cheek—but he feels the grip at his waist, the insinuating press against his groin.

He hits out, twists and struggles and fights, but the crowd is harder than any front line that’s ever broken against him, less giving than any bad fall. It forces him back into the other’s hands, now moving insolently over his back, his hips, his ass—one hand scoops between his legs from the back and Paolo cries out, but his voice is swallowed by the thundering bass. And then he’s muffled properly, another hand forcing his head into the man’s chest as he scratches uselessly with his nails at that.

“Come on. Try. Try.” The voice licks over the side of his throat, teases the edge of his ear as he strains against the hand, his lungs beginning to burn, his head to swim. “You want to. You’ve always wanted to.”

His back hits a wall. His head is finally let up, just seconds before the dizzying black sparks would’ve merged together into a faint, but his mouth is swallowed up, pried open, invaded by a merciless tongue. He still can’t breathe or see. His hearing’s telescoped down to the frantic pounding of blood in his ears, and the rest of the world’s restricted to touch alone, as his arms are suddenly restricted by the unforgiving wind of cloth around them.

Hair brushing his forehead, getting in his eyes and making them itch. A minor annoyance compared to the biting fire in one nipple as fingers pinch and grind over it. Paolo lifts a knee and tries to slam his ankle into the man’s calf, but only ends up forced further onto his bound arms, the back of his head ringing as one raw kiss after another jams it into the wall. He’s never had to lean up before; his neck is already aching from the strain. His back is arched almost to the breaking point, and then the man throws more of his weight forward so Paolo has to drop his foot or risk paralysis.

Paolo’s foot hits the ground, and in the same second his trousers slide down over his hips. He curses into the man’s mouth, letting his teeth come down to savage the tongue still propping his mouth open, desperately trying to see beyond the dark humps of the shoulders, to know if all those people—a hand wrenches his head back by the jaw, and an amused glitter fills his vision.

“You don’t care about them,” he says. “Remember? It’s all what you control.”

He takes Paolo’s mouth again before Paolo can answer, his hands down between them, pressing their thumbs so hard into Paolo’s inner thighs that Paolo’s legs begin to numb, his knees to unlock from sheer lack of blood. They don’t lift till Paolo’s on the point of collapse, and then they slide up, deceptively gentle, before abruptly pulling away just as Paolo, all the blood forced into his face now, submits to a groan. He stumbles, and the hands catch him but they also spin him around, pushing him back into the wall and then holding him there as a body presses up against him, as teeth jam down into the nape of his neck. He’s squirming, his hands clenched against the small of his back so tightly that he’s losing the feeling there.

But not so tightly to keep his wedding ring from being pulled off. Paolo returns to twisting then, but just for a moment: he’s slapped, quite casually but quite painfully, back against the wall. It’s stunning and he slumps there, his bruised cheek throbbing against the smooth cool paint, as a hand wanders from the point of his hip up his side, over his arm, along his throat to finally stroke his jaw with a gentleness that hurts more than the earlier blow. It opens his mouth, and then two fingers hook into the corner of that—something else comes in, something small and round and metallic that catches up against his back-teeth as he suddenly bites down, his legs forced wide.

He misses the fingers, which pull at the corner of his lips till he thinks he tastes blood, till his head is forced as far around as it can go. Then they let him go, except not really because he’s still being had from the inside, and he’s trying to climb the wall with his knees alone, it’s so—the man shifts against him and Paolo drops, whimpers.

“For safe-keeping,” he’s told, and kissed slowly, softly over his torn lip. “Keep your mouth shut, capitano.”

The hands slide to his hips, then to his thighs. They dig in as the man fucks him, forces someone else’s rhythm on him as the wall scratches his cock till he thinks he can’t take that, the pain’s more than the—he’s got the mouth on him again, working a wet trail from the top of one shoulder to the top of the other, and callused fingers teasing at his prick, unheeding of the raw spots, and Paolo doesn’t know where he is or who he is or who he should be, and _God_.

He screams. The ring falls from his mouth, but he doesn’t notice in all the shattering noise that engulfs him.

* * *

It’s gotten more difficult, in this age of the media, but there’s still respect for past customs, and the San Siro was still built for a time where matters were dealt with quietly, out of sight of those who it didn’t concern. Paolo can still get Ibrahimović on his own.

The man’s fresh from the showers, trousers on but clinging with the damp. He’s busy toweling his hair, which has returned to the more usual loose waves, so he doesn’t notice Paolo right away. And even when he does, it’s via the mirror before him.

He stops, his hand still half-raised with the towel dangling from it, his mobile features rapidly smoothing to noncommittal. He’s a smart man, and more than even that since he seems to have discovered the power of occasional prudence. “Ah. I was expecting Nesta.”

“I know. He told me,” Paolo says.

Ibrahimović purses his lips. He looks at the towel he’s holding and puts that down. His hand absently passes over his chest to scratch at his shoulder, then swipes at a trickle running down his back. Then he turns away, but the mirror traps his wry, close-lipped smile for Paolo’s perusal. “Well, I could’ve guessed. You lot, you’re like that. Always watching each other…in each other’s business—God, don’t you ever get tired of mothering? I thought you had your own kids to worry about.”

Paolo finds himself biting the inside of his mouth. The game’s still with him—he’s barely run through the showers himself, and left before he had time to address his hair or his clothes, or his mood. He watches the other man rummage about in a shaving kit for something, keeping his clenched fists behind his back. He’d like to punch Ibrahimović but that would be unfair, and more than that, it’d be unlike him. He’s lost the game, but he still has that.

A small can of something, a razor, a metallic flash all slip through Ibrahimović’s fingers before he finally fishes out a comb. He looks at it, then at his hair, and then at the comb again; it’s a small plastic one, probably swiped from some hotel, and if the man’s hair is anything like Paolo’s before a flatiron and gel has been applied, then it won’t be good enough.

Something sharp stabs into Paolo’s chest and he has to look down. He does his best to make his hiccup of breath inaudible, but he sees the way Ibrahimović’s toes curl against the floor. His nails dig harder into his palms even as he tells himself he’s an idiot for taking offense at a mere comparison. And anyway, the game is over. There’ll be—

“What?” Ibrahimović looks over his shoulder in mock surprise. His eyebrows rise with something else, though. “You’re still here?”

“He gave his word. I’m making him break it, but I’ll keep it in his place. We do have a sense of…” And Paolo stops there, frowning.

Because Ibrahimović is laughing. Low and gravelly, his dark eyes flashing more than his white teeth. He drops the comb, and at one point he even has to put a hand on the counter for support as he shakes his head, bends down so the sound of his laughter echoes up from the bowl of the sink.

“Oh, my God,” he says when he finally rises. He shakes himself to the waist, throwing off water so hard that a few drops actually hit Paolo. “Oh, my God. You—took that seriously? You and him—oh, my God. Fucking Nesta. Fucking _Maldini_ …oh, my God.”

Paolo has to move his hands down from the small of his back to the sides of his legs. He knows that that way his fists can be seen, but the stiffness of his arms is getting too taut. He needs them to relax. He needs himself to relax, since clearly there’s been a fundamental misunderstanding here. A _mistake_ \--he winces, then looks back up.

Ibrahimović’s managed to calm himself. Somewhat. The corners of his mouth still twitch, and when he speaks, his normally low voice has been attenuated by suppressed humor. “Look. Maldini. Um. Yeah, I made a bet with Sandro…but come on. The other one, he had to have told you about that—” he gestures to his hair “—it was about _flatironing_ , for God’s sake. I was kidding. I didn’t actually mean that if we won…I was pulling his leg, since…just how drunk did you get on the way back from Japan, anyway? He was _real_ snippy.”

“You were…kidding?” Paolo slowly repeats. He moves one arm back, reaching across to grab at his other elbow. Then he grinds his fingers around the joint, slow and agonizing like the twist inside of his chest. Of course the man would bring up Japan, just two weeks ago and God, but then Paolo had been thinking, like he never really let himself think through his whole career, that maybe it would work—he’d never wanted to jinx himself, worrying that much about superstition, but this was it and so he’d thought maybe it was all right.

But it’s not. They’ve lost, and moreover, he’d contributed to that loss, clear and undeniable, and what he’d said to Ambro had been a little bit of a misrepresentation. Because the next time, it won’t be the same game. It’ll be the _second_ half of the derby, and this was the first and it was also the last of the firsts for Paolo, and he can’t make up this one. More than that, he can’t think that maybe it’s not so much time for him as that it’s something else, something he can fix, and—and this grinning idiot is _laughing_ at him for taking it seriously?

“Yeah,” Ibrahimović says. He’s calmed further, frowning now, as if he doesn’t quite understand what’s going on anymore. He turns towards Paolo, his hand still on the counter. “Look, I’m sorry if you…but honestly, you really think I’d resort to something like that? I mean, for one, my wife’s happy enough to work out what I want, and…and two, you seriously fucking think I’d pull something like that? _Fuck_. Fucking God—you are fucked up. You and Nesta, you—what the _fuck_ is _wrong_ with you?”

“Don’t raise your voice at me,” Paolo tells him, tense and sharp. He stares back as Ibrahimović vacillates between an angry confrontation and a disgusted spin away.

Ibrahimović stops where he is. His shoulders pull back, and his head rises so his shadow completely blankets Paolo. He looks at Paolo, narrow-eyed, the tension coiling in him so Paolo’s inexplicably wondering exactly how much taller the other man is—something Paolo never thinks about, heights—and then pivots away on one heel. He takes a step to the side, then two forward so he stops just short of passing Paolo.

“You.” He leans forward, till some of the drying strands lifting from his brow glance across Paolo’s temple. “Don’t tell me what to do. _Capitano_.”

The tightness in Paolo’s arms snap. He shoves Ibrahimović.

The other man skids backwards a bit, his eyes widening. They stay wide as he catches himself on the wall, but then he blinks, grows thoughtful. His elbow slides up the wall as he shifts his weight. “Huh. Well, that’s a little better. You’re picking on somebody who’s actually—”

Ibrahimović’s not that far away; it was a sudden push, not a hard one, and anyway, the man has bulk to him. Paolo tells himself to ignore that, to not even _think_ \--and he doesn’t when he steps forward and shoves the other man again. This time he braces his heel and puts some force into it, but this time it seems like Ibrahimović’s expecting it and he doesn’t move an inch.

So Paolo swings an arm. Inside he’s screaming at himself, but too loud to know whether he’s telling himself to stop before this really gets out of hand—as if it hasn’t already—or if he’s yelling something else. If it’s even him yelling, or if it’s something he thought he’d put behind him, a long time ago.

“What the—” For a moment Ibrahimović looks startled, his fingers trapping Paolo’s wrist to his shoulder. Then he curses and ducks, Paolo’s other hand just grazing its knuckles against the man’s cheek before Ibrahimović seizes that one as well. “What the _fuck_ , Mal—”

Paolo does something. He doesn’t have time to realize what before he’s suddenly breathless and pained against the wall, grimacing from the hard tap his skull’s taken. He twists his head to the side, sees his half-curled fingers with the tight band of bigger, broader fingers gripped beneath them. A shiver goes through him, some kind of echo from a moment that never was and never could’ve been, and then he looks _up_.

Ibrahimović’s as close as a shadow. He’s still damp all over, his chest picking up the front of Paolo’s shirt, and his eyes are glittering. He was lying before, Paolo can read that from them: he might’ve liked it not to be a joke, wouldn’t have been disgusted with the idea. But he doesn’t care that it really is one. He was serious when he turned down that possibility.

“You’ve lost it,” Ibrahimović eventually says. He runs his tongue over the edge of his top teeth. “Maldini, look, you lost the fucking game.”

Paolo opens his mouth to tell the man he knows, he was there, he remembers, but instead what comes out are curses, language Paolo picked up somewhere in his youth and never unleashed even when he was his angriest. Not in the U. S., not in Istanbul, not any time—but here, to Ibrahimović’s clear confusion, he throws them all out. No order, no real emphasis or aim: he’s simply spilling over, and has to do something.

He doesn’t even think the other man understands half of it, knows the dialect, but he says it anyway. And Ibrahimović should and does get the snarl, the twisting and jerking. The kicking—the other man looks down, then up, and then down again. Then he shakes his head, muttering beneath his breath—Paolo forces up his knee and slams it into Ibrahimović’s thigh. That brings the man’s head up like a shot.

Ibrahimović stares at him for a moment, long and hard and unreadable. And then, as deliberately as a cat releasing a mouse, he pulls Paolo off the wall and spins him about.

The mirror shows them, Paolo’s hands flapping against his own belly, Ibrahimović’s knuckles marching over each of his wrists like immovable mountains. Paolo has his head twisted to the side, because he can’t quite look but he has to, his eyes can’t pull away from the betraying glass, so Ibrahimović’s scrutinizing gaze is unobstructed. And so is Paolo’s face, flushed and gasping.

“What the _hell_ is this?” Ibrahimović asks. He loosens his grip, then jerks Paolo back against him when Paolo’s reaction is to elbow him instead of pull away. “I said I wasn’t even looking for—all I wanted was Nesta’s face when I told him I was kidding. And if you’re trying to be him for me…well, that’s fucked up, and that’s also not how he’d look.”

“Get off,” Paolo finally says. He’s tired and he lets his head drop. The tiles beneath their feet are wet in places, reflecting the light so he has to narrow his eyes against the glare.

Ibrahimović’s breath tickles the back of Paolo’s neck, tightening the muscles there. “So you can try and floor me again? That was a lousy punch, by the way.”

“Because I don’t _hit_ people.” The floor’s too bright, so Paolo looks at the mirror again, at the way their shadows fall across their reflections. He hears Ibrahimović’s snort and twists his wrists, looking away. “Don’t you _dare_ laugh at—”

The noise stops, but the silence is so loud Paolo raises his head again. He sees Ibrahimović’s reflected gaze, thoughtful and dark. Watches as the man turns his head so his breath will touch Paolo’s temple as he speaks, and then feels the light, uneven brush. “And do what? Take you seriously instead? You want me to?”

He should already be doing that, Paolo thinks, and nearly laughs at himself. Because God, if any man on this earth has less reason to take him seriously now, it’s Ibrahimović. He’s lost his grip on himself, so utterly he’s not even sure how he put it on in the first place.

“Well, you’re right about that. You don’t hit people. You’re too lousy at it to be doing that that often,” Ibrahimović finally says. He leans down further, so Paolo turns his head away and then flinches, sucks in his breath as teeth sink into the side of his neck, right in the center of a shallow bruise. They linger there a moment, and when Ibrahimović’s mouth moves on, presses against the top of Paolo’s shoulder like it has a right to that, Paolo can see that that faint greenish color has gone to dark red. “You’re not my captain, Maldini. You don’t tell me to shut up, you don’t tell me to leave you alone. You go crazy on me, I’m going to ask you what the fuck is going on.”

Paolo’s breath hitches. Ibrahimović’s eyes flick up, meet Paolo’s in the mirror; Paolo’s chin drops almost in reflex, but Ibrahimović bites him again, on the collarbone and through his shirt. It’s not enough to leave a mark, probably, but it brings his head back up so he watches unblinking as Ibrahimović moves both his wrists to one hand, as then the freed hand works up beneath his arms. A fingertip circles around the topmost button of his shirt, then bends to tip the plastic disk through its hole. The sides of his collar fall slightly apart, and then further as the finger taps at them before moving on to the next button.

“You know, somebody really should’ve come in here by now.” Ibrahimović’s mouth slides up the side of Paolo’s throat, pausing once so his tongue can probe at the bruise he deepened. “You lose it, you really do it properly, don’t you. What’d you tell everyone else? That I’d be busy fucking you stupid because of a fucking little _bet_?”

“It’s not little—” Paolo closes his eyes and bites the side of his mouth, then his lip. He jerks at his wrists as a draft touches his chest, sneaking beneath the part of his shirt that’s still done up. Then he jerks again, but because Ibrahimović’s finger has drawn its tip over his breastbone. “It’s the derby. Doesn’t it matter to you?”

“Yeah, but it’s football. It’s not—it’s over. We won.” The grip on Paolo’s hands tightens the more his shirt falls open, but Paolo still can’t help struggling, till finally Ibrahimović presses his stretched mouth over the entire side of Paolo’s jaw, as if he means to bite that out. He holds the position for a moment, then pulls away without even having left a mark. “Stop that or I’ll leave something your wife’ll ask about, if not your teammates.”

The last button falls to Ibrahimović’s roaming hand, and then the halves of Paolo’s shirt drift apart, till it’s barely hanging onto his shoulders. He can feel the right side actually trying to slip, but the dampness has soaked from Ibrahimović’s body into the cloth and sticks it in place. “You’re going to lose someday.”

“And then what, am I supposed to understand then? I’ve lost big games before. We got kicked out of the Champions League last year, on a—” Ibrahimović’s mouth briefly leaves Paolo’s jawline to spit out something harsh and caustic. But then he laughs, slouches back against the wall so Paolo has to rise up on his toes and the weight of his legs pulls them apart and back to fall on either side of the other man. “Doesn’t leave me going over to the other side and asking to get fucked. I just get off the field and get on with it. What, you never learned to do that?”

“I was doing that before you were even born,” Paolo snaps. He wrenches his head away, then thrashes hard enough to even free an arm—but he’s unbalanced, up on his toes, and it barely takes a nudge from behind to send him falling over the sink counter. His foot skids in a puddle as well, and for a few seconds it’s just a struggle to stay up, to stay off his—his damn knees.

Ibrahimović just watches him, doesn’t move a bit. And that actually makes Paolo respect him, that he can figure out that much and also that he says nothing even though he could take the easy shot. He’d be justified, at this point, but he holds himself back. Which makes it worse, because he’s going to be worth testing but that won’t fall to Paolo. Because he can do it, because he has the time to do it and—

“—I’ve been doing this since before you were born,” Paolo says again, quietly. He tells it to the dripping faucet, and then he closes his eyes.

He hears the footsteps. Then there are the hands, pushing roughly beneath his arms and pulling him up, turning him around. His back comes to rest against another wall; Ibrahimović’s palms warm his shoulderblades before moving up to cushion his head as he lets it fall back. They stay there for a couple seconds, and then sift into his hair. He squeezes his eyes shut harder, a little confused, and one hand drops to his right arm. Ibrahimović pulls that up, till his hand is tucked behind his neck, and then does the same to the other one, so Paolo has to move so his shirt can peel off his back instead of tear. He feels his sleeves being pushed up his arms, and then the cloth tightening around his wrists.

Part of it suddenly swings around his neck and his eyes flutter open. Then he tries to shut them, but Ibrahimović suddenly presses forward, his nose pushing up against Paolo’s. “No. Look at me.”

Paolo does. That tail of his shirt gets stretched across his neck and then knotted behind his neck, so he can’t lower his arms. It’s not that tight, but the strain on him already is making his elbows shake so the cloth pulls against his throat, like a half-killed promise.

Ibrahimović puts up his own arms beneath Paolo’s, lending some support. His fingers slide back into Paolo’s hair, then twist tight. “Kiss me,” he says.

Paolo opens his mouth, then begins to move his head, but the fingers in his hair hold him. “Don’t—”

“Look, fuck what you want. You don’t get that now. You wouldn’t leave, so you can fucking well kiss me,” Ibrahimović tells him, pressing close, voice dropping to a rumble. His mouth grazes Paolo’s lip when he pronounces his vowels. “Besides, I think that’s what you really want.”

He lets Paolo duck his head, then try to look to the side, his fingers slack but still wound in Paolo’s hair. So finally Paolo looks straight ahead, and—kisses him. Lightly, till Ibrahimović responds and does so hard enough to force Paolo’s neck back into his own knuckles. Then Paolo mirrors it, does what the man wants.

“Better.” Ibrahimović runs his hands down Paolo’s sides, then in vague patterns over Paolo’s chest. He drops one to Paolo’s belly, just splaying his fingers there as the muscles twitch by themselves in nervous anticipation. His other hand continues to wander, teasing here and there, too inconstant and noncommittal; Paolo twists, his shirt drinking up the sweat running down his neck as it condenses around the knots in it, and Ibrahimović finally deigns to let Paolo have his mouth again. But only access—he makes Paolo whimper before he actually does something with it, and then not for long enough before he’s moving on, nuzzling too gently along Paolo’s jaw. “Better. You did want this, didn’t you?”

Paolo doesn’t answer. He pushes into Ibrahimović’s mouth, raises his hips as much as he can, trying to provoke some thoughtless response from the other man. And he does make Ibrahimović shift uncomfortably, have to drop a hand to adjust himself—Paolo throws himself forward and traps Ibrahimović there, but the angle is too acute for him to maintain and he falls backwards as Ibrahimović laps up sweat from the hollows of his throat. He does do that, but it’s not enough; Ibrahimović still moves with the lazy assurance of someone who doesn’t really care how it turns out, who isn’t so desperate that he _needs_ it instead of wants it.

And his hands, they keep moving too lightly over Paolo. Skimming the bruises, feathering over the scrapes, letting up whenever Paolo tries to increase the pressure—they slide between Paolo’s thighs and Paolo closes his eyes in frustration, expecting nothing different.

So the finger drawn over the length of his erection, and then the sudden loosening of his trousers, that shocks a gasp from him. He opens his eyes to see Ibrahimović’s dropped-jaw smile, like a wolf grinning into the face of its prey.

“Weren’t falling asleep on me, were you?” Ibrahimović asks, brow arched. He sends Paolo’s trousers sliding all the way to his ankles with a quick twist of the wrist, then cups Paolo’s balls in one hand as he licks at Paolo’s mouth. Then he leans back, his brows pulling down. “Say you want this.”

Paolo can’t help pushing his hips down onto the man’s hand, but he keeps his mouth shut.

A few creases work across Ibrahimović’s forehead. He presses his lips together, his thumb rolling in circles along the side of Paolo’s prick. “Don’t make me hit you ag—oh. _Oh_.” He smiles. His fingers snap tight around Paolo’s still twitching cock. “You still think you’re getting that? Well, you’re not. Get that through your damn head—you don’t get everything. You never did, you fucking prince.”

He drags his hand down Paolo’s prick, slow and even-pressured, and Paolo’s head goes back, the world seems to fly upwards as his eyes roll involuntarily. The cloth goes taut across his throat and Paolo actually chokes for a moment, then comes back to himself shaking against the wall, held up only by the weight of Ibrahimović on his knees, locking them straight.

“Say it.” Ibrahimović kisses the side of Paolo’s mouth, his tongue working in at the corner. He runs the ball of his thumb over the head of Paolo’s cock so Paolo strangles on his gasp. “ _Say it_.”

“Please,” Paolo manages.

For a moment the other man’s pupils swallow his irises, but then Ibrahimović snorts. He kisses Paolo again, on the mouth, and then on the side of the neck, where he’d bitten earlier. Then on the point of the shoulder and Paolo’s trying to tear his shirt apart by then, too close, but the cloth holds and Ibrahimović drops closer. Caresses Paolo’s nipple with his mouth, and then he’s down on his knees, looking up at Paolo over the dark red head of Paolo’s cock. His mouth’s parted, but too far away.

“Please.” Paolo rips at his shirt, at his neck, at his soul. “Please, damn you, I want it. I want it, I want it, I always—”

Ibrahimović kisses Paolo there, and that’s finally enough.

* * *

It took longer than Paolo had said, but when he finally steps through the door, he doesn’t see anyone. He takes too long checking on that, and Ibrahimović brusquely pushes him out of the way.

The other man had held him up till the end, then drawn careful, almost tender fingers over Paolo’s neck and wrists as he’d undone the knots. He’d lent Paolo a shirt as well, which is far too large but which says somewhat less than trying to make do with the stressed, sodden mess to which Paolo’s own shirt has been reduced. But then he’d stood back, and seen to himself as Paolo had put his appearance back together with shaking fingers. He’d moved around as if Paolo hadn’t even been there, and still is as he walks down the hall. He doesn’t even look back.

Paolo isn’t quite either, as he’s facing the direction he needs to go anyway, but he still thinks as if he was. And it’s less painful than he’s been expecting, he finds. He should have known, but then, he’s never claimed to know everything. Only pretended, but he’s not now. He doesn’t need to, not when he’s seen the worst come to life…and found it relieving, after all. He’s lived without it for so long, but he thinks now that he has to live with it, he doesn’t mind.

* * *

It’s predictable enough, Paolo thinks as he pauses in the aisle. Then Christian begins to ask him what’s the matter and Paolo comes back to himself, moving on past Ibrahimović and his family. He notices that Ibrahimović doesn’t quite look at him, though the man clearly is watching him pass by.

Several minutes later, an outraged Sandro appears at Paolo’s seat and informs Paolo that he’s going to kill Ibrahimović. Gabriella is hanging onto Sandro’s arm while trying to balance Sofia, and Paolo catches a distinctly sympathizing look being exchanged between her and Adriana as he rises. He doesn’t send Sandro away completely satisfied, but he does do enough to keep murder at bay till they land. And by then, he hopes, the trip will have distanced Sandro enough for the man to be sensible, and then they can talk. They need to, anyway.

“Paolo.” Adriana looks at him thoughtfully over her book. “Can I…”

He pauses, then smiles regretfully. “No.”

They worked that out before they were even married, so there’s not a flicker of anger or sadness in her eyes as she nods. There is, however, a daunting firmness to her jaw. “Then please, deal with it before we land? I want this to be a good vacation, for you and for us.”

“I will,” Paolo promises.

He actually runs into Ibrahimović at the halfway point; the other man starts, then attempts a casual snort, but his shoulders are too tensely drawn for him to pull it off. “Just so you know, I was going to wait till we were on the ground, but Helena’s making me.”

Paolo laughs quietly, but lets it trail off when he sees how much more irritated Ibrahimović’s become. “Earlier’s better, probably. And anyway, I don’t think there’s that much.”

Ibrahimović looks sharply at him, then leans in so close that Paolo begins to swivel out of the way. But the other man instead turns himself to prop a shoulder against a bulkhead. He glances casually down the rest of the seats, which are mostly empty, at extra cost, but Sandro’s piercing gaze seems to make up for that.

At least to Paolo, as Ibrahimović returns Sandro’s stare till the other man has to look away. Then the side of Ibrahimović’s mouth draws up, wry and tight. “You know…he’s just fun to tease, mostly. Because of his reactions. It was a joke with him. Not so much with you—I did tell you to leave.”

“I know, and I didn’t.” Paolo makes himself keep up his chin. “Thank you.”

Ibra—Zlatan looks at him again, and then quickly away, so Paolo suddenly is reminded of how young the man is. “It wasn’t just because I felt sorry for you, you know. If you really are retiring this year, then I want all I can get from you first. We’ve still got another derby, at least.”

“At least,” Paolo echoes. He’s surprised, and then he thinks to himself that he really has been unfair to the other man. But he’ll not make that mistake again, and he does have time to fix the error as it stands.

“I want all you’ve got,” Zlatan repeats, and this time he holds his stare on Paolo. “While I’ve got you.”

Paolo blinks, surprised again. Then he smiles, and he knows his surprise still shows but he’s accepted that. He’s learned, at so late a time in his life…and then, perhaps it’s not so late after all. “You’ll get it.”

It’s a promise. And he’s still never broken one.

**Author's Note:**

> Set around and after the Dec. 23, 2007 Milan derby, but does jump into Maldini’s early career (the tidbit about Arrigo Sacchi is as related by Paolo, and thank you to pippopippo for the help with that). Also shamelessly assumes the rumor at the time that Maldini, Nesta and Zlatan all took the same plane to their vacation spots is true. In traditional European folklore, a [nightmare](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hag) was thought of as a spirit that came and “rode” the sleeping victim, creating a sensation of terrorized paralysis.


End file.
